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Lot essay

Dr. Joachim Pissarro has confirmed the authenticity of this work.

The fan shape Pissarro employed in the current sketch can be placed in the larger context of the japonisme movement, when many segments of Parisian avant-garde found inspiration in the Japanese prints and decorative arts that began to circulate in the early 1860s. As Christopher Lloyd writes of this body of work, "For Pissarro, the adoption of the fan as an art form came at a critical time, namely the close of the 1870s. To a certain extent the fan may have assisted Pissarro in his search for compositional unity. The emphasis that had to be placed on the two corners of the fan meant that the figures were given prominence against the background...Pissarro also showed considerable originality in this format..." (C. Lloyd, Pissarro, London, 1980, p. 235).